Fallout from the Internet Debacle 292
gatesh8r writes "This article off of Janis Ian's site lashes out at the RIAA for "wanting to control everything that the consumer will purchase" and then proposes some mild and thoughtful solutions to the problem. Nice to see an artist write up something like this." This is her follow-up to her earlier piece.
Can't stop them completely (Score:2, Insightful)
Too early in the morning to be this cynical (Score:3, Insightful)
The basic plan sounds good on paper -- get all the tracks in all the major labels available in one place, and sell full-sample-rate tracks for 25centa a pop. Try it for a time and see how it goes.
Only problem is that P2P networks are still up. This idea would have been great pre-napster, but not today. What you'll have is a small percentage of the P2P users spend a small amount of cash to build up libraries, then those libraries are shared and the RIAA site doesn't rake in the fees like they thought they would.
how's that phrase go? "Bzzzt, but thanks for playing!"
great article (Score:2, Insightful)
For those who haven't read the article, she basically proposes that the big record companies, rather than waste their time competing with one another, should just cooperate and set up a single web site that offers all of their music for download. Meanwhile, they would stop selling compact discs entirely. They would sell these songs on a nickel-per-download basis (as she points out, if the record industry had a nickel for every time someone stole one of its songs, they'd have made $150 million a year!), and make tons more money than they do selling music the old fashioned way.
While she doesn't mention small labels, or people who lack broadband or computers, I'm sure there are simple ways of dealing with these problems. The gist in the end is that piracy-hungry consumers pose a bigger threat to the record industry as a whole than each record company does to one another. Just as the American colonies once banded together to expel their English masters, to the benefit of England and the United States alike, so must the record industry unite for the benefit of us all.
Sell CDs with tons of MP3s (Score:4, Insightful)
The People vs. The Music Industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Then came the advent of large scale P2P software based, copyright infringement while I was in college. I began being able to avoid what I used to consider "bad" CD purchases by only obtaining the one good song without having to deal with the dreck on the rest of the album or paying for it.
Now in many cases I would love to pay for the one or two album tracks or single remixes that I like but the music industry has steadfastly refused to provide me a mechanism to do this. However, there is really nothing technologically preventing record labels from either a.) providing customized CDs for their target audience (in the same vein as the NOW compilation albums) or b.) providing digital music at a fraction of the current price of singles and CDs.
Unfortunately they don't seem remotely interested in satisfying their customers in this demand. Legislating against technology can only last for so long.
Janis Speaks well... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a good point, it's about the majority in this country (or it's "supposed" to be). The Artists and record companies are the minority, the people should have some say. The Artists themselves should definately have some say. I am in the industry, so my livelyhood depends on the record sales and stuff as well, an I am not for stealing, but I am definately sgainst he MPAA/RIAA types.
The industry is still operating under laws and concepts developed during the 1930's and 1940's, before cassettes, before boom boxes, before MP3 and file-sharing and the Internet. It's far easier to insist that all new technologies be judged under old laws, than to craft new laws that embrace all existing technologies. It's much easier to find a scapegoat, than to examine your own practices. As they say, "You can't get fired for saying no."
Janis is also very right in saying that the way that the industry is set up is old, based off a model from the 30's and 40's. We don't use any other markets in the same way that we did in the 30's and 40's, so why should we for music and entertainment.
Perhaps, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think that they buy their own arguments, else they would have done this already. What have they got to lose? To hear them tell it, they are already bleeding in the streets from Internet swapping. By their logic, the stuff is already out there, so they might as well provide a method for people to pay for it.
Re:Too early in the morning to be this cynical (Score:5, Insightful)
I could get the file instantly; it was guaranteed to be CD quality or better; and it was in an open format (mp3, or much better, ogg).
Even if the track were available for free elsewhere, it just wouldn't be worth the hassle of locating it, queueing it, and then hoping that it was the right track at a decent quality.
Re:misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a scarcity mechanism. When media moves to an infinite product (there's more music out there than one could hear in a lifetime) the scarce object becomes the consumer's time. Saving the consumer time by building an efficient and convenient product produces the value.
winds of change (Score:3, Insightful)
Like the movie industry did with VCR, I think the music business will have to try and live with things like files sharing and the internet. Copyright laws should change to incorporate it too. At the moment money-hungry companies and lobby-controlled governments are trying very very hard to stop/control/forbid these new kinds of information exchange, while (IMHO) it is embarrasingly obvious that the current structures for enforcing and earning money from copyrights will break down. You just cannot stop these changes from happening.
It might not be entirely clear yet how to make money with open source software, or how to use p2p file sharing in the music industry, but i think it will become clear. If not, the industry will break down and something new will appear. This has occurred in history many times, and it will occur again.
For now, i (want to) believe in open source. As for the music industry: i'm not sure yet...
Impulse Buys (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly, give me cheap downloads and I'll rpobably end up spending a whole lot more in the long run for no extra cost to the company supplying the products as I'll download 50 cheap songs before I'll download one expensive one!
It's all about control (Score:4, Insightful)
a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer...
and control is why the music industry will never implement her "modest proposal": if it succeeds, then they lose control of the market, and with it their monoploy profits.
For further analysis along these lines, see
How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate [std.com].
Re:Bold, but false statement... (Score:1, Insightful)
Explain to your friends why they should vote against him.
Convince your friends to explain to their friends why they should vote against him.
Talk to your local newspaper. I'm sure they'd be interested if you had a letter from your rep which states something he now denies ever saying.
Show up at his fundraisers, rallies, public appearances.
Run for office.
If you really care about this issue, it's going to take more than posting rants to slashdot.
But what do I know, I'm just an AC.
Re:Too early in the morning to be this cynical (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem with this proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
I like it, but somehow I doubt we'll ever see it.
On the other hand there might be a business model here for someone. License the Bluebird jazz catalog from CBS, for instance, clean up the recording and put them up on the web and see if anyone is interested. In fact I could see a charity -- say a retirement home for musicians -- using this as a funding mechanism. Whether CBS would go for it is another story, but since it's a way for them to make money with little to no effort on their part, it might be worth a go.
the bottled water biz model (Score:2, Insightful)
Professor Lessig has mentioned this casually before, its the bottled water business model. Water is essentialy a zero cost commodity, yet the vending of repackaged water is a phenomenally successful business. Consumers, faced with a conveinent, glitzy, and higher quality product will, do often choose it over a free alternative.
If the record companies, a consortium of artists (or some mediary via licensing) were to offer:
- a simplistic/transparent interface
- an immense and highly/easily searchable library
- secure high-speed downloads
- cd quality encoding
- reasonably pricing (subscription or a quarter a song works)
- a guaranteed lack of virii, spyware or drm
and maybe some extras
- bonuses for signing up friends - buy 5 get 1 free - anywhere streaming of your purchases
they *WOULD* be raking it in. No questions. But the Recording Industry isn't in the music business. They are in the CD business.
I couldn't agree with Janis more. Every person I talk to says they would snatch up a subscription instantly. This must happen.
The Real RIAA Business Model Pay-Per-Use (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, what do the record companies do for us? (Score:2, Insightful)
And being such a big money business, they tend to promote mindless ear-candy rather than real music art. They cheat artists and resort to unethical methods of controlling record stores and radio stations. Why are we trying to find ways for them to stay in business?
Adding a bunch of videos and pictures other junk to an album is just adding fluff and detracting from the art that is (supposed to be) the music.
Artists make most of their money off touring anyway. If you feel bad for downloading, just hand your favorite band a $5 bill after their show. It's more money than they'd ever see if you actually bought the albums...
-Paul
Re:Too early in the morning to be this cynical (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't kill the music industry. It's big, and the companies involved do too many other things. It's highly unlikely that the big names would ever decide to ditch music and just sell game systems and internet access. Even if they were getting no profits from their music parts, they'd probably use their other resources to try to do something about it, rather than giving up.
Therefore, if we want to stop them, what we need to do is give them a viable business model. We have to actively help them do things we like.
</desmond-tutu>
Is it worth $.25/song to have the music industry's attempt at a business model compatible with consumer rights succeed? Wouldn't you pay $.25/song if the RIAA would chill out? Think of it as buying influence, and you'll realize that you're getting a lot for your quarter that you don't get from the P2P networks.
Just think: they set up this thing. It appears on slashdot, with a favorable article. Everybody goes there and gets a couple of songs. They make more money in a few hours than they can ignore. If people are interested in paying to make Blender open source, won't people be even more interested in paying to make the RIAA reasonable? Oh, and there's also this music thing, but that's not important.
Re:Too early in the morning to be this cynical (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's assume they go for the 25 cents/download model. I'd prefer to think of it not as paying for the mp3, but more along the lines of paying for a quality file. I don't want to spend my time downloading junk files from some anonymous kid's computer because he thinks that "It's funny to trick people into downloading the wrong song". And remember that we're talking about the out of print catalog, which is probably going to be harder to find than britbot's latest single.
Re:Too early in the morning to be this cynical (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're downloading from them when they logged, tough cookies! You spent 20 minutes downloading at a low average throughput downloading 30% of a song you wanted. Now you go back and search again and find another user with a copy of it, so you start downloading from them. This time the transfer from them to you completes 100% - BUT... their download from someone else crapped out at 72% complete, so the song you got is STILL incomplete!
This problem is called reliability! As hyped as P2P might get in the press and in the minds of advocates - it's still unreliable! If Janis' suggestion were implemented, listeners would have a reliable source to obtain full downloads of quality music. I think most people would be like me and pay up to a quarter for that reliability. My time, as well as most others I'm sure, is worth much more than $.25 for the countless cummulative hours spent dealing with transfer interruptions and abortions.
Cannibalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Now personally, I think a download project like this would stimulate listener interest in music and growth in music buying, especially in people who will pay $.25 per song but won't pay $17 for a CD. Imagine the 15 year old discovers that they like Blues by listeing to the OOP stuff, then decides they want to hear more modern stuff, so they go buy a bunch of Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, which they never would have considered before. Thats a win for everyone, but getting music executives to take that risk is going to be pretty difficult.
Re:The People vs. The Music Industry (Score:4, Insightful)
I really like listening to "My Sharona" sometimes. Not extra-intellectual high quality songcraft or anything, but it's lots of fun. Some of the one hits wonders make it because people like them and they are actually likeable. I had high hopes for Lisa Loeb's stuff after that one song, "Stay," (one of the few to hit number 1 by an unsigned artist, and it is a good example of songcraft) but found most of the rest of her stuff somewhat insipid. Does that mean I should not listen to "Stay"?
In other words, I see your point about quality artists who consistently deliver good stuff. But for those artists who hit and miss, there's no reason to stop listening to the stuff they produce.
It would be ideal, however, if we could just buy the single (which is fortunately what I did with Loeb's stuff, thanks to a friend with a cassette deck) instead of the whole album. Of course the record industry they'd make fewer sales...
Re:My code, your music (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when have artists ever done anything just for the love of it? There have been some, but they're few and far between. They've also often ended up going insane or dying pennyless and in ill health at a relatively early age.
Back in the stone age do you think they did cave paintings for fun? The priests had a job to do, and if they didn't make those drawings then the hunt would fail (or so the tribe believed) and the priest wouldn't have had the level of respect that he did in the tribe. He might not even have gotten fed. (of course i am not a sociologist/archaeologist)
In the middle ages artists depended on support from the nobles. They didn't sell their paintings per se, but they depended on the continued production of art that the local noble aproved of in order to remain a part a of the court.
Anyone who thinks that artists have ever (as a rule) not been paid for their work, or thinks that there should ever be a time when they aren't is living in a dream world.
Note that this does _not_ indicate support for the RIAA. There's a difference between thinking that artists deserve compensation for their work, and approving of the way that the RIAA claims that as it's goal while keeping as much of the money to itself as is possible, with no regard to the well being of the artists who produce the stuff they're selling.